In the Beginning

Long ago four supercarriers loaded with political dissidents and convicts from Earth crash-landed on the distant planets of Tarsonis, Moria, and Umoja.

These hardy and resourceful terrans established colonies and eventually spread to other planets. In time the largest and most technologically advanced of the colonies, Tarsonis, founded a powerful yet oppressive government called the Terran Confederacy.

A bloody rebellion ignited against the Confederacy, led by an ambitious and charismatic ex-prospector named Arcturus Mengsk.

Yet as Mengsk and his Sons of Korhal strove to liberate their terran brethren from the yoke of oppression, a far greater conflict loomed on the horizon….

First Contact

Humanity first learned that it was not alone in the universe when a gleaming fleet of protoss warships emerged over the Confederate planet of Chau Sara and incinerated its surface without warning.

On Chau Sara’s sister planet, Mar Sara, Marshal Jim Raynor found evidence of a second alien presence. Attacks broke out across the planet, and it took the Sons of Korhal to mount any kind of organized resistance to the aliens, which had now become known as the zerg.

Jim Raynor and the rebels evacuated as many people as possible from Mar Sara before the mysterious protoss fleet reappeared and incinerated the planet.

Thoroughly disillusioned with the Confederacy, Raynor joined the Sons of Korhal. On the planet of Antiga Prime, he worked with Mengsk’s second-in-command, Sarah Kerrigan – formerly an elite assassin for the Confederacy – whom Mengsk had liberated from the government’s neural conditioning. Despite a rocky start, Raynor and Kerrigan quickly formed an efficient partnership.

Mengsk stirred up a full-scale revolt against the Confederacy on Antiga Prime. He then employed a psi emitter – a Confederate-designed device that acted as a beacon for the zerg – to destroy the Confederacy’s forces. Soon afterward the protoss incinerated Antiga Prime from orbit, just as they had done to Chau Sara and Mar Sara.[1]

The Great Betrayal

Next Mengsk struck at Tarsonis, the capital of the Confederacy. To Kerrigan’s horror, he had psi emitters placed on the uninfested and densely populated planet. As the zerg descended on Tarsonis, Raynor began to question Mengsk’s sanity: no measure seemed too extreme for Mengsk if it achieved his goals.

This time the protoss fleet’s leader, Executor Tassadar, deployed ground forces in an effort to save the planet. Mengsk ordered Kerrigan to vanquish the protoss. Despite her misgivings, Kerrigan obeyed and ensured that the planet would fall to the zerg Swarm.

Surrounded by zerg, Kerrigan called for evac. However, in a shocking betrayal, Mengsk abandoned Kerrigan and her troops to their fate. Furious, Raynor rushed to Tarsonis in a desperate attempt to save his partner. Yet in spite of his best efforts, he arrived too late.

The Dominion and the Queen of Blades

With the destruction of Tarsonis and the collapse of the Confederacy, most terran survivors quickly pledged allegiance to the Sons of Korhal, which had become the primary military force opposing the alien invaders. As planet after planet appealed to the Sons of Korhal for aid, Mengsk announced that a new government, the Terran Dominion, was necessary to protect these worlds. Promising victory over the aliens, he declared himself emperor of the Dominion.

Meanwhile, Jim Raynor struggled with the loss of Sarah Kerrigan as he came to the full realization that he had begun to fall in love with her. Haunted by her death and the many other demons of his past, Raynor stole Mengsk’s flagship, the Hyperion, and resolved to seek justice in Kerrigan’s name.

What Raynor could not have known, was that Sarah Kerrigan was not dead.

The Overmind – the supreme consciousness who controlled the zerg – had altered Kerrigan by infecting her with the zerg hyperevolutionary virus. Her subsequent evolution unlocked incredible strength and immeasurably potent psionic abilities. Ultimately she emerged as the Queen of Blades: the Overmind’s loyal servant, an extraordinary entity stripped of human ethics and morality and ruthlessly dedicated to the survival of the Swarm.

Yet the Overmind had suffered a terrible blow: Zeratul, a leader among the protoss’ estranged brethren, the dark templar, killed one of the Overmind’s cerebrates. The zerg brood formerly controlled by the slain lieutenant ran amok and turned against the rest of the Swarm, which was forced to obliterate them.

All was not lost for the zerg, however. When Zeratul killed the cerebrate, he made fleeting telepathic contact with the Overmind. In that moment, the Overmind discovered the location of the protoss homeworld of Aiur. The zerg assaulted Aiur, and although the protoss resisted valiantly, the zerg established a foothold, and the Overmind embedded itself in the planet’s surface.

Joining forces with Jim Raynor, Tassadar rallied the flagging protoss for one final push against their foes, yet protoss forces only weakened the zerg while sustaining heavy losses themselves. In a last desperate gamble, Tassadar channeled the energies of the Aiur protoss, and the outlawed energies of the dark templar through the hull of his ship, the Gantrithor, and steered the vessel on a collision course with the monstrous Overmind.

Tassadar’s brave sacrifice resulted in an explosion that killed the Overmind and threw its minions on Aiur into disarray. The protoss had little cause to rejoice, though, for much of Aiur was left in ruins. Furthermore, the Swarm as a whole was undefeated. Far away on the planet Char, Kerrigan sensed the Overmind’s death and finally grasped the true purpose of her creation. The reign of the Queen of Blades was about to begin.[2]

An Unlikely Ally

Even without the Overmind, there was little doubt that the zerg would overrun the remaining protoss on Aiur. The Aiur protoss’ only hope for survival lay in escaping to the dark templar homeworld of Shakuras, where Zeratul offered to shelter the protoss refugees. It was there that the protoss were confronted by Kerrigan, who demanded to speak with the dark templar matriarch, Raszagal.

Kerrigan swore that she was no longer a merciless killer, and notified the protoss that several zerg cerebrates had merged to create a new Overmind. If this Overmind matured and gained control of the Swarm, Kerrigan warned that she would revert to the savage and cruel creature she had been. In order to prevent that from happening, Kerrigan volunteered to help the protoss fight the zerg and the new Overmind. Raszagal accepted Kerrigan’s proposition despite the reservations of Zeratul and others.

In the course of executing their plan, the protoss grew suspicious of Kerrigan. They learned too late that their alliance with her had only helped the Queen of Blades achieve her true goal: eliminating a challenge to her rule over the Swarm. Due to the dark templar’s assistance, several dissident cerebrates were destroyed.

Kerrigan departed from Shakuras even as the horrified protoss concluded that they had no choice but to finish what they had started. Utilizing the power of an ancient xel’naga temple, the protoss successfully obliterated the zerg on Shakuras. Even so, they paid a terrible price, for the cataclysmic explosion left Shakuras a wasteland of sand dunes and shattered ruins.

The United Earth Directorate

Unbeknownst to the terrans in the Koprulu sector, Earth had kept a long and silent watch over its far-flung colonial planets. The frightening discovery of hostile aliens managed to unite Earth as never before, leading to the formation of a new government called the United Earth Directorate (UED). When it became clear that the Koprulu colonies were losing strength, the UED’s ruling council considered it the perfect time to establish control over its distant cousins.

After monitoring zerg and protoss activity for several months, the UED was confident that it could control the zerg. By this time the UED had received word that a new Overmind had formed on the planet Char. Confident of victory, the UED dispatched an expeditionary fleet to enslave the young Overmind and use the Swarm to overthrow the Terran Dominion.

The fleet moved to secure the planet Braxis as a staging point, assaulting its capital city. The city was well defended, and progress was slow, but UED forces made contact with fighters from the Confederate Resistance Forces. Their leader, Samir Duran, explained that they had sworn to overthrow the Terran Dominion and Emperor Mengsk. These fighters volunteered to become new recruits of the UED.

With Duran’s aid, the UED soon had access to the Dominion’s primary datanet – specifically, its weapons diagnostics and other top-secret material. The UED moved on to the Dylarian shipyards, where the bulk of the Dominion’s battlecruisers were docked. Striking swiftly, the soldiers commandeered the ships for their own use and conscripted the remnants of the Dylarian defenders.

UED forces bolstered their strength further and headed to Korhal IV, capital world of the Dominion. After a fierce battle, Directorate forces laid siege to Korhal’s capital city, Augustgrad, forcing Emperor Arcturus Mengsk to contact the UED fleet requesting a parley.

The emperor’s small fleet was surrounded, but while UED forces were preparing to take Mengsk into custody, Jim Raynor arrived in Mengsk’s old battlecruiser, the Hyperion, along with a small protoss fleet. Raynor angrily made it clear that he was rescuing Mengsk only because a mutual acquaintance wanted Mengsk alive. Moments later, Raynor, his protoss allies, and Mengsk had escaped.

The UED persisted in its campaign, moving on to Char to capture the developing Overmind and, through it, seize control of the zerg. Directorate forces overcame the Overmind’s defenses and soon specially trained medics began administering powerful neurostims to pacify the organism. By then Duran had been revealed as a spy working with Kerrigan, but that discovery made little difference: the Overmind was firmly under Directorate control.[3]